1. the publishers could arrange distribution in crescent order of payload size (smaller stores, that buy less books, served first)
Um, right. No way in hell the large bookstores go for that, and there's no publisher in the world that has enough clout. Yes, Scholastic could do it with HP. And when the last HP book is out in two years, Barnes and Noble and all the other large stores would stop carrying any Scholastic books.
The current way is the fairest. They don't want to deal with the headaches of all the bookstores begging to get it first. And the bookstores are content enough as long as no one else has an advantage. Works for everyone.
To me it makes me wonder where they put all that R&D funding into. Bill claims they spend more on R&D than any other company in the world, and I certainly believe him. It's just that I don't see it anywhere in their products.
There's a big difference between "R" and "D." MS seems to spend more time on the "D" by far. I'd say they have a "C&D" department for "Copying and Development" except that acronym is already taken.
Of course, for SCO, sending out C&D letters is their equivalent of R&D.
I keep seeing this come up over and over again. There is no correlation between funding and creativity. In fact, the better funded a company is, the less likely they are to take the chances necessary to come up with something new.
You contradict yourself. As you say, there is a correlation. An inverse one.;)
It's marketing - no more, no less. By creating anticipation and supply restrictions they are seeking to drive more sales and make more money. They probably get evening news coverage of the midnight launch and more people will buy the book to see what all the fuss is about.
Anticipation yes, restricted supply no. They get as many books out there as they can, so they're not playing the whole "beanie baby" trick where you sell someone a piece of shit, but they want it because it's "rare." Scholastic gets as many copies of HP in stores as they can. In fact, one reason they choose the date is because they *don't* want a restricted supply issue - they don't want either 1) pirates or 2) stores who get the book first to have an advantage.
They want supply to go from 0 to near infinite immediately, so everyone can get a book, pirates have no mathod of making money, and they don't have to play favorites as to which stores get the book first. That way no one gets pissed off.
It is your responsibility to read your subscription agreement.
PC Gamer does this too, and it happened to me. I subscribed specifically for a few years, with no running renewal agreement. I let it expire, I got a collections letter like this guy. So it's not a "didn't read the agreement" issue. The letter specifically referred to the situation as a "debt," which is untrue. If I ever get up off my ass, I've been planning on referring this to the AG's office, but since they're based in CA, I used to live in CA, and now I live in VA, I'm not sure which one.
If you ignore any request for payment from any company even if its fraudulent you again have only yourself to blame if you do not challenge it.
To an extent, but since claiming that someone owes you money when you know they don't is fraud, you can certainly blame them too. A lot of people might think it's easier to pay $12 than risk their credit.
I called PC Gamer, asked them what the hell this was about and why they're claiming I owe them money when I don't, and they just cancelled my subscription.
Could someone actually provide some good novels that take place in Cyberspace, or are closely involved?
Books such as SnowCrash and Neuromancer were great but other 'cyberpunk' books i read have very little to do with cyberspace and more to do with the dystopian future. Yes yes i know thats the cyberpunk theme, but really i want books that involve hacking etc that wont cost 80 bucks.
O'Reilly has a number of good books that satisfy that requirement.
Their statement doesn't make any sense economically.
They say that costs outway the benefits. If that is true, then no sane private entity should invest in it.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell anybody.
I was thinking the same thing. The only thing that makes sense is that a private entity could in theory do a project that doesn't pay off as fast - the study focused on the costs over the first 5 years which contains a lot of one-off costs.
I'm doubting that too, though - seems a government would be able to leverage bonds or tax funds mroe easily, and doesn't have to show a profit. So probably BS all around.
But destroying a company -- any company -- just because of executive stratagy is very harmful to the "little people" who depend on the company for livelyhood. Should the middle-class workers really be punished just to make a point?
It's not just making a point. What about all the little people put out of work after MS kills companies through anticompetitive practices? It's supposed to be a deterrent to them in the future and anyone else thinking of trying such tactics. I don't think anyone's suggesting that bankrupting the company intentionally would be the preferred route, but the penalty needs to be felt.
Actually, if the reports that Apple never even TALKED to AMD about switching are correct, I really doubt Jobs initiated contact, unless he already knew about Intel's "Incentives" and planned to use them. If he didn't already know, he would have likely contacted both, so as to play them against eachother(As any good negotiator would.)
That's an interesting angle, but I'm not so sure. Couple of reasons: 1) I'm not so much buying the rumor that Apple didn't contact Intel. 2) AMD is still perceived as a cheapo by many, and Apple may have wanted to go with the big dog. Can't blame them there. 3) Why would Intel suddenly decide Apple - the company that had always vilified them - would be "conquorable" unless Jobs made friendly? 4) It makes more sense to go with Intel if it's an attempt to nail MS as some (okay, Cringely) speculate.
Dunno if it went that way. Right now, Apple needs intel a lot more than the other way around. I doubt Jobs would have had an intel version of OS X for so long if he hasn't been damn worried about IBM screwing them. I don't think it probably took much convincing from Intel (aside from finances), and I'd think Jobs probably initiated contact.
I didn't think our brains were binary. I thought that part of the difficulty in reproducing a mechanical brain was preciously it's shades of grey.
Granted, I'm somewhere over 30. Are younger people that dumb nowadays?
If you're over 30, you should appreciate a little touch of grey. We will get by!
Well, the hoaxer must have pasted a lot of other stuff in then, because it does seem to be included in a section on their headline, next generation, phones of which the RAZR is the first and PEBL, including this phone, is the next.
Delete the apple logo and that slide of the presentation still makes sense within the "next gen phone" context. I can't imagine that doing a deal with apple wouldn't be played a lot mroe strongly in front of financial people. That's why I'm thinking possible hoax.
(BTW, you exhibit no understanding of bootstrapping industrial operations, which only supports my conclusion that Humans are no longer capable of undertaking large engineering projects. Too many people think like you, in terms of "profitable quarters" and not instead in terms of "advancing civilization".)
Are you an industrial engineer? If not, neither do you. You're talking about inventing an entire industry on another stellar body to solve a problem (global warming) on this one. Not logical. Do you understand Quixotic pursuits?
A certain number of launches will have to be done from Earth, certainly,
A large, prohibitive number
Furthermore, you'd have to be smoking a particularly strange form of ganja to think that "launches" are the way to do it from the lunar surface. Only a moron would try that. The only economical way to do it is to use mass drivers along the lunar surface. They could be built from local materials (Al, Fe and Si from the lunar regolith) and energized from the Sun.
1. Is a "mass driver" something that has ever been used to put something into orbit? I've heard about those things, puts you right into Kooksville. These things have been debunked about as much as Tesla coils for power transmission. 2. Speaking in terms of raw materials gets you right back where you started. Having to develop an entire industrial infrastructure on the moon. Give this idea to people who actually do something for a living and they'll laugh you out of the room.
Perhaps you think all this is "not practical". You are certainly free to think so. But you are wrong about this in so many dimensions of the problem that it's almost pointless to respond to you. You are uneducated about space operations and industrial development, boy. PERIOD. Please run and read some books before speaking again on this topic.
1. Your arrogance is nauseating, unfounded, and saying things like "it's pointless to respond" is an ad hominem attack that belies your ignorance of actual science. 2. What experience do you have in space operations? Your answer better include NASA employment and a Ph.D in astrophysics, or you're one more clown who's read too many sci-fi novels and conspirac theories.
As a final note... you threw out the term "during the next 100 years". A century is nothing compared to the length of Human civilization.
No, but it's the time frame over which the global warming problem - you know, that thing we're talking about here? - needs to be fixed. So if you find a great way to solve the problem after we're all extinct, good job. Also, most solutions can be ranked by how long it takes to solve a problem. If yours takes centuries, head back to the drawing board.
If I'm actually incorrect about my implied figures (note: I'm not)
You haven't given any figures. I'm not sure what an implied figure is. Can you imply 3.14? 2.78?
It hardly matters to me if Humans become a space-faring civilization by the year 2100 or 2200. It's irrelevant. What IS relevant is that Humans should be able to bootstrap themselves into a civilzation that exploits all the resources of the solar system. Humans did it to the entire Earth, while the village yokels like you said it couldn't be done. We can therefore do it to the entire system of planets, asteroids and moons (... and yes, even the Sun, via a Dyson Sphere).
More sci-fi and buzzwords. You should bootstrap your paradigm out of the box. Have fun convincing other people that we should spend our entire GNP for the next few centuries on the goal of colonizing the solar system as an end into itself.
In short, what education do you have that backs any of this up? What math do you have? Your last response was so much a joke I'm starting to think you're a troll, and if so, nice job.
You cannot undertake such a construction project by relying on Earth launches. You have to use the Moon. The lunar regolith is like talc in consistency, and is therefore processible as a readily available ore for Aluminum, Iron, Silicon, Oxygen, Titanium, Calcium, etc. The lunar surface is bathed in sunlight, which can be used for power. The Moon is the only manufacturing center available for construction of large objects even down to low Earth orbit (since it takes 22 times less energy to sling mass to LEO from the Moon than it does to lift it to LEO from the Earth).
See, still screwed up. How are you going to *mine* those materials from the moon, let alone *manufacture* what you'll need? The amount of equipment and time required, still, not working. Not to mention the moon does have gravity, I believe 1/6 the earth's, and the fuel required to get those materials out of the moon's gravity would also be rather heavy...etc. Not practical during the next 100 years.
Take a bright light, like the ones you find in your old school gym. Just ONE of them. Make that the sun. set it about ten feet up. Turn it on. put your hand CLOSE to the floor, note how detailed and DARK the shadow is? Move your hand closer to the light. Note how the shadow gets bigger, but lighter?
Yeah, see, I understand the effect. It's the details that don't work. To actually block out any appreciable part of the sun - and have an appreciable penumbra - the thing would have to be enormous. It would probably require more fossil fuels than we have on earth to get such an amount of material in orbit. So we're going to have to forget about that.
Aside from what's already been pointed out, d'ya have any idea how large something would have to be to block out the sun? From space? Damned big. Prohibitively big. Not gonna work.
Still light on facts, but I do recall anecdotal stories about people who have drowned in freezing temperatures being revived successfully long after the "normal" length of time, with little to no brain damage, having been preserved by the extremely cold temperature to which they've fallen.
That's relatively common, actually. The metabolic processes that lead to brain damage are significantly slowed during hypothermia. The brain thus uses oxygen much more slowly.
So the idea is reasonable, though I'll echo everyone else and wait for something other than a press release.
FYI, Thomas Jefferson wasn't involved in writing the Federalist Papers. (He was in Paris at the time.) They were written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, with some help from John Jay.
Not to mention which Jefferson wasn't a Federalist, disagreed strongly with them, and wouldn't have helped write the Papers if he had been around.
Nope, when I picked this UID, Nutscrape 4 had 20% marketshare and was still required for most projects.
Uh huh. I'd call that a dead horse, since the derivative of it's marketshare at that time was quite negative. Go for "InterNutExploderSucks," more timely.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, right. No way in hell the large bookstores go for that, and there's no publisher in the world that has enough clout. Yes, Scholastic could do it with HP. And when the last HP book is out in two years, Barnes and Noble and all the other large stores would stop carrying any Scholastic books.
The current way is the fairest. They don't want to deal with the headaches of all the bookstores begging to get it first. And the bookstores are content enough as long as no one else has an advantage. Works for everyone.
Wow, thanks, haven't seen that for a while. Seems somehow appropriate...
There's a big difference between "R" and "D." MS seems to spend more time on the "D" by far. I'd say they have a "C&D" department for "Copying and Development" except that acronym is already taken.
Of course, for SCO, sending out C&D letters is their equivalent of R&D.
You contradict yourself. As you say, there is a correlation. An inverse one. ;)
Huh? Did somebody take a hammer to either your hands or your keyboard at some point?
Anticipation yes, restricted supply no. They get as many books out there as they can, so they're not playing the whole "beanie baby" trick where you sell someone a piece of shit, but they want it because it's "rare." Scholastic gets as many copies of HP in stores as they can. In fact, one reason they choose the date is because they *don't* want a restricted supply issue - they don't want either 1) pirates or 2) stores who get the book first to have an advantage.
They want supply to go from 0 to near infinite immediately, so everyone can get a book, pirates have no mathod of making money, and they don't have to play favorites as to which stores get the book first. That way no one gets pissed off.
PC Gamer does this too, and it happened to me. I subscribed specifically for a few years, with no running renewal agreement. I let it expire, I got a collections letter like this guy. So it's not a "didn't read the agreement" issue. The letter specifically referred to the situation as a "debt," which is untrue. If I ever get up off my ass, I've been planning on referring this to the AG's office, but since they're based in CA, I used to live in CA, and now I live in VA, I'm not sure which one.
If you ignore any request for payment from any company even if its fraudulent you again have only yourself to blame if you do not challenge it.
To an extent, but since claiming that someone owes you money when you know they don't is fraud, you can certainly blame them too. A lot of people might think it's easier to pay $12 than risk their credit.
I called PC Gamer, asked them what the hell this was about and why they're claiming I owe them money when I don't, and they just cancelled my subscription.
O'Reilly has a number of good books that satisfy that requirement.
Shhhhhh! Don't tell anybody.
I was thinking the same thing. The only thing that makes sense is that a private entity could in theory do a project that doesn't pay off as fast - the study focused on the costs over the first 5 years which contains a lot of one-off costs.
I'm doubting that too, though - seems a government would be able to leverage bonds or tax funds mroe easily, and doesn't have to show a profit. So probably BS all around.
So we're calling religious dogma "alchemy" these days, I take it?
It's not just making a point. What about all the little people put out of work after MS kills companies through anticompetitive practices? It's supposed to be a deterrent to them in the future and anyone else thinking of trying such tactics. I don't think anyone's suggesting that bankrupting the company intentionally would be the preferred route, but the penalty needs to be felt.
That's an interesting angle, but I'm not so sure. Couple of reasons: 1) I'm not so much buying the rumor that Apple didn't contact Intel. 2) AMD is still perceived as a cheapo by many, and Apple may have wanted to go with the big dog. Can't blame them there. 3) Why would Intel suddenly decide Apple - the company that had always vilified them - would be "conquorable" unless Jobs made friendly? 4) It makes more sense to go with Intel if it's an attempt to nail MS as some (okay, Cringely) speculate.
Dunno if it went that way. Right now, Apple needs intel a lot more than the other way around. I doubt Jobs would have had an intel version of OS X for so long if he hasn't been damn worried about IBM screwing them. I don't think it probably took much convincing from Intel (aside from finances), and I'd think Jobs probably initiated contact.
If you're over 30, you should appreciate a little touch of grey. We will get by!
godalmighty, there should be a sense of humor test for mods.
Delete the apple logo and that slide of the presentation still makes sense within the "next gen phone" context. I can't imagine that doing a deal with apple wouldn't be played a lot mroe strongly in front of financial people. That's why I'm thinking possible hoax.
Considering the presentation didn't focus on that at all, or bring any attention to it, I might even believe this is a hoax.
It's scary that this is all it takes to get a mac rumour going.
Sadly, this is actually more evidence than usual for a mac rumor.
Are you an industrial engineer? If not, neither do you. You're talking about inventing an entire industry on another stellar body to solve a problem (global warming) on this one. Not logical. Do you understand Quixotic pursuits?
A certain number of launches will have to be done from Earth, certainly,
A large, prohibitive number
Furthermore, you'd have to be smoking a particularly strange form of ganja to think that "launches" are the way to do it from the lunar surface. Only a moron would try that. The only economical way to do it is to use mass drivers along the lunar surface. They could be built from local materials (Al, Fe and Si from the lunar regolith) and energized from the Sun.
1. Is a "mass driver" something that has ever been used to put something into orbit? I've heard about those things, puts you right into Kooksville. These things have been debunked about as much as Tesla coils for power transmission. 2. Speaking in terms of raw materials gets you right back where you started. Having to develop an entire industrial infrastructure on the moon. Give this idea to people who actually do something for a living and they'll laugh you out of the room.
Perhaps you think all this is "not practical". You are certainly free to think so. But you are wrong about this in so many dimensions of the problem that it's almost pointless to respond to you. You are uneducated about space operations and industrial development, boy. PERIOD. Please run and read some books before speaking again on this topic.
1. Your arrogance is nauseating, unfounded, and saying things like "it's pointless to respond" is an ad hominem attack that belies your ignorance of actual science. 2. What experience do you have in space operations? Your answer better include NASA employment and a Ph.D in astrophysics, or you're one more clown who's read too many sci-fi novels and conspirac theories.
As a final note ... you threw out the term "during the next 100 years". A century is nothing compared to the length of Human civilization.
No, but it's the time frame over which the global warming problem - you know, that thing we're talking about here? - needs to be fixed. So if you find a great way to solve the problem after we're all extinct, good job. Also, most solutions can be ranked by how long it takes to solve a problem. If yours takes centuries, head back to the drawing board.
If I'm actually incorrect about my implied figures (note: I'm not)
You haven't given any figures. I'm not sure what an implied figure is. Can you imply 3.14? 2.78?
It hardly matters to me if Humans become a space-faring civilization by the year 2100 or 2200. It's irrelevant. What IS relevant is that Humans should be able to bootstrap themselves into a civilzation that exploits all the resources of the solar system. Humans did it to the entire Earth, while the village yokels like you said it couldn't be done. We can therefore do it to the entire system of planets, asteroids and moons (... and yes, even the Sun, via a Dyson Sphere).
More sci-fi and buzzwords. You should bootstrap your paradigm out of the box. Have fun convincing other people that we should spend our entire GNP for the next few centuries on the goal of colonizing the solar system as an end into itself.
In short, what education do you have that backs any of this up? What math do you have? Your last response was so much a joke I'm starting to think you're a troll, and if so, nice job.
Just wondering, why?
See, still screwed up. How are you going to *mine* those materials from the moon, let alone *manufacture* what you'll need? The amount of equipment and time required, still, not working. Not to mention the moon does have gravity, I believe 1/6 the earth's, and the fuel required to get those materials out of the moon's gravity would also be rather heavy...etc. Not practical during the next 100 years.
Yeah, see, I understand the effect. It's the details that don't work. To actually block out any appreciable part of the sun - and have an appreciable penumbra - the thing would have to be enormous. It would probably require more fossil fuels than we have on earth to get such an amount of material in orbit. So we're going to have to forget about that.
Aside from what's already been pointed out, d'ya have any idea how large something would have to be to block out the sun? From space? Damned big. Prohibitively big. Not gonna work.
That's relatively common, actually. The metabolic processes that lead to brain damage are significantly slowed during hypothermia. The brain thus uses oxygen much more slowly.
So the idea is reasonable, though I'll echo everyone else and wait for something other than a press release.
Not to mention which Jefferson wasn't a Federalist, disagreed strongly with them, and wouldn't have helped write the Papers if he had been around.
Uh huh. I'd call that a dead horse, since the derivative of it's marketshare at that time was quite negative. Go for "InterNutExploderSucks," more timely.